Re: World Cup 2018: The best party money could buy (until 2022)!

The first 25 of this BRA-SER match has been truly sublime and the announcing crew have matched the pace and fervor. There's just something about football commentary lexicon that's hard to beat in moments touch as this.

Re: World Cup 2018: The best party money could buy (until 2022)!

So I've been mulling over the whole 48 team world cup and how much I hate the idea of 3 team groups so I worked out a 48 team, 12 groups of 4 tournament where the top 8 group winners get a buy to the round of 16 and other 16 top 2 finishers play for the right to advance to round of 16. Thats a total of 95 games over the course of 37 or 38 days if you do pretty much 4 games a day every day of the first 2 match days. For the simultaneous matches, you'd have 3 groups each day...
In the USA/Mexico/Canada bid, you could have games at 12, 3, 6, 9pm eastern with the last games starting playing in a western time zone...not sure how this would work in other countries but I don't really think this tournament will ever be in a single country again...The big reason to me is this format would require at least 18 stadiums. That accounting for each pitch needing at least 2 days off between matches. if you extended the simultaneous games out 1 or 2 more days you could change that but then it extends the tournament longer...no one seems to want that.

From what I've read, the biggest reason the chose 16 groups of 3 format, it didn't require a longer tournament window (32 days), but it seems terribly uneven with teams playing a strange schedule

Day 1: A1 vs A2
Day 4: A1 vs A3
Day 7: A2 vs A3

That seems like a very challenging difference for the 3 teams. Do you want to be A1 so that if you advance you have more rest before your round of 24, or round of 16 match? Or do you want to be A2 so you have rest and know what you need to advance? I would assume A3 is the least interesting but maybe not because you are fresh compared to your opponent on Day 4? It's just terribly unbalanced compared to now.

Re: World Cup 2018: The best party money could buy (until 2022)!

Can we give a second to Sweden for this World Cup run?

Beat out the Dutch for second in their qualifying group (while finishing second to France).
Beat Italy in their playoff.
Won their group, beating the World Champions, the best team from CONCACAF ( ), and arguably one of the best teams in Asia.

Re: World Cup 2018: The best party money could buy (until 2022)!

For the earlier talk about taking out a player to prevent a clear goal:

Just look at Luis Suarez and his intentional handball in 2010... He swatted the ball off the goal line and got a Red Card for his efforts. Ghana then missed the ensuing PK.... Uruguay then won the match (can't remember if it went to PK's or they got the go-ahead goal in Extra Time).

It's never too early to start the Pre-game festivities GoCats!!!GO BLACKHAWKS!

For the earlier talk about taking out a player to prevent a clear goal:

Just look at Luis Suarez and his intentional handball in 2010... He swatted the ball off the goal line and got a Red Card for his efforts. Ghana then missed the ensuing PK.... Uruguay then won the match (can't remember if it went to PK's or they got the go-ahead goal in Extra Time).

Re: World Cup 2018: The best party money could buy (until 2022)!

6pm ET is 8am in Melbourne. 12 noon is 5pm in England, 6pm for the continent & 7pm for Western Russia.

So 12 & 3 works for Europe. 6 & 9 work for Asia. Anytime works for North, Central, and South Americas.

im sure he heartburn is in the not so pretty results who faces who. I assume they’d have a table of if these 4 don’t finish top 4 this happens, etc. it’s been done before and makes far more sense than what we have now.

There isn't enough. On the other hand, no one wanted ten more minutes of England-Panama or Belgium-Tunisia. Though I would gladly take ten more minutes of Japan-Senegal.

I wish they would've broken out first half and second half.

I like 538 and their work but, when it comes to soccer, they can be a bit out of touch. First thing to do would’ve been to do some research by talking to a ref and not just looking at the “rules according to FIFA”. (Major point: FIFA alone does not decide the Laws of the Game, the International Football Association Board does. FIFA gets 4 seats along with England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.) Stoppage time is only allowed for:

substitutions
assessment and/or removal of injured players
wasting time
disciplinary sanctions
stoppages for drinks (which should not exceed one minute) or other medical reasons permitted by competition rules
delays relating to VAR ‘checks’ and ‘reviews’
any other cause, including any significant delay to a restart (e.g. goal celebrations)

The biggest key that 538 gets wrong is calculating the time lost due to throw-ins and goal kicks. The problem is it’s not in the LOTG to add time lost for throw-ins or goal kicks! The referee shouldn’t add time in those situations unless something leads to a delay (a lost ball, time wasting etc.). These are normal situations and should not be accounted for.